After revealing three new champions in the works, Lead Producer Ryan “Reav3” Mireles went on to talk about League of Legends champion reworks. All of these are taken from the Champion Roadmap for April 2022, or the Reddit discussion thread.

We have been aware of the Udyr rework for a while now, and Skarner won the community poll for a rework out of 5 champions. What really came as a surprise was the announcement of a “Comprehensive Gameplay Update” or CGU for Aurelion Sol. Let's break down the details of each.

Udyr Rework

Many details of the Visual side of Udyr's Visual and Gameplay Update have been revealed before, and if you wanna take a look at that development, check our article on it here.

For this Champion Roadmap, Reav3 announced that Base Udyr is finished. He and his team are now working on Udyr's skins, with most people working on Spirit Guard Udyr. He shared a few words regarding his thoughts regarding the development:

“One of the goals for Spirit Guard is to keep some of the essence of old Udyr, so to do that it will represent the time he spent training in Ionia, and will also use the same animals as pre-VGU Udyr (Tiger, Bear, Turtle, and Phoenix). We wanted Spirit Guard to immortalize his old animal forms, while also cranking them up to 11. I don’t want to spoil everything yet, but I will leave you with concept art and an early model of his Spirit Guard skin before he channels one of his animal spirits.”

Reav3 put the emphasis on early, denoting that this may not be the Udyr that we see when he eventually hit live servers. That being said, the updated Spirit Guard Udyr matches the in-game look of the game more. Spirit Guard is my go-to Udyr skin, and color me excited with this sneak peek.

Reav3 added the following comment on a Reddit thread:

“Yeah, sorry. It's the first VGU with a Ultimate, and even just regular skins take along time to remake for Udyr because of his 4 forms, so the Ultimate is about as much work as as making a whole new Champion. In many ways Udyr is the same amount of work as doing 2 VGUs.”

He also said that they want to make sure that the ultimate skin “feels” like an ultimate skin. We can expect the Udyr rework this summer at the earliest, after the colorful bot lane champion that you can read about here.

Skarner Rework

Players got to choose one champion out of five choices to receive a VGU earlier this year. Skarner won, and rightfully so. The brackern champion as he is right now, has one-dimensional gameplay, with a kit that aged like milk. Spamming Q every second isn't really fun, especially if you have to do it for 30 minutes.

Progress on the Skarner rework hasn't begun yet, according to Reav3, but will begin very soon. Aside from his kit, the Champion Design team is also working on making a new narrative for Skarner, and of course a new look. Peep them here:

These are all the different “forms” of the new Skarner that Reav3's team is exploring. According to him, they aren't “locked in” on anything yet. Accompanying this image is some commentary from Reav3 about all the angles they could approach Skarner's story from:

“The first two rows are attempts to keep Skarner’s theme pretty much the same as live while making him more unique on the League roster by adding other fantastical elements rather than just a traditional scorpion body structure.

The third row contains explorations of a full reboot of the Brakern. It explores them as ancient protectors of the old Shuriman civilization before it was lost to the sand. The idea is that they are constructs built from crystals housing thousands of elite warriors' souls.

The last row is an exploration of a version of Skarner where his current lore is continued. We haven't committed to this yet, but in those versions he is captured by Piltover and experimented on in order to create a Hextech guardian they can control. But he regains his memories, escapes Piltover, and is now hellbent on destroying the city for what they did to him and his people. And now he has sweet Hextech augments to help him do it. Piltover will soon have a taste of their own medicine, and it is bitter.”

A bigger blog post focusing more on Skarner can be expected soon, Reav3 adds.

Aurelion Sol Rework

Finally. I'm not alone in saying that Aurelion Sol has epic lore, art, and voice. In comparison, his gameplay is a bit… lackluster. Reav3 agrees, and even pulled out some stats that Aurelion Sol was one of the most purchased champions on release day, but most players dropped him after a few games. With a pick rate of less than 1%, Aurelion Sol is one of the champions who see the Rift the least. Despite this, Aurelion Sol still tops the “most liked visuals” on surveys according to Reav3.

Over the years, the star dragon has received some small tweaks and changes, which bore little to no effect. Taking all of the previous points in consideration, Reav3 and his team decide to try a new type of champion update: a Comprehensive Gameplay Update. As explained by him, a CGU's goal is to “to update gameplay for two types of champions: Those that have high quality art and narrative, but whose gameplay just doesn’t quite deliver on their fantasies, or champions with more complicated gameplay issues that can’t be solved by changing one or two abilities (like the small adjustments to Tahm Kench were able to accomplish). We then rebuild the champion’s kit from scratch with the same model, theme, and narrative. ASol will be the first champion to go through a CGU, and if you’re happy with the results we may take a look at other champions that fall into these categories in the future.”

Basically, Aurelion Sol will be given an entirely new kit (think Urgot and Sion). These changes will be “thematically cohesive” with Aurelion Sol's current identity, which is an arrogant celestial being.

No specific release date was revealed, however Reav3 and his team are targeting a release within the year, and hope that the updated Aurelion Sol will deliver on the fantasy that everyone was excited about. Aurelion Sol is currently planned to release after the new Shuriman tank top laner, which you can read about here.

Stash “Stashu” Chelluck is working on the Aurelion Sol update, as well as Udyr's. He is no stranger to reworks, as noted by his work on Talon, Fiora, and the Runes and Masteries system. He also designed Aphelios, Gwen, Rell, and Qiyana.

Conclusion

With these League of Legends reworks and three new champions already revealed, League of Legends in 2022 sounds like it would be exciting. Meta shakeups, both in pro play and in casual play are certainly possible with these changes and additions. For one, I would love to see Aurelion Sol be picked again in pro play. Skarner and Udyr moving away from their one-dimensional gameplay is also a welcome change, and would make jungling much more fun. Potentially, we can also see these champions played elsewhere, since Udyr already makes a great bruiser up in the top lane, and Aurelion Sol has a history of being played as a support.


For more League of Legends news, click here. Wanna check out the new champions? Check out what we know here.